BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES: In 2018, amidst cessation claims, Canada’s federal government legalized with few restrictions the sale and promotion of nicotine vaping products. The sale of aggressively promoted products became more widespread and vyouth vaping surged.
INTERVENTION OR RESPONSE: Despite the later camp-down on advertising, a nicotine content cap to 20mg/ml and increased taxes, ever evolving product design, flavours and other attributes continue to render vaping easy, appealing and affordable.
RESULTS AND IMPACT: While federal and provincial campaigns, regulations and other efforts to address youth vaping have contributed to stabilizing rates, current vaping among youth and young adults remains high, and much higher than pre-2018 rates. Vaping remains popular among younger generations and never-smokers, while dual use is very common. Industry linked front-groups, such a Rights4Vapers, appear to have successfully delayed regulatory efforts to reduce products’ appeal to youth through national restrictions on flavourings, making other controls on products and packaging even more distant.
Smoking continues its progressive decline, but youth represent essentially the same proportion of nicotine users as they did a decade ago. Indeed, Canada has as many nicotine users now as it had a decade ago. Meanwhile, overall smoking cessation rates have remained unchanged for the past two decades.
CONCLUSIONS: In light of the growing health risks associated with vaping and dual-use, Canada’s experience with nicotine vaping products serves as a reminder of the considerable collateral damage cause by the expansion of the recreational nicotine vaping market. The vaping industry’s delinquent behaviour with respect to regulations combined with its sustained lobbying efforts and use of front-groups should prompt re-examination by Canada and other jurisdictions of how they control the nicotine industry and its products.